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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/22971139">took one to the chest (without even a sound)</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/AlexRyzhy/pseuds/AlexRyzhy'>AlexRyzhy</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Wynonna Earp (TV)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>A lot of them - Freeform, Canon Compliant, Character Study, F/F, Flashbacks, Gen, Hurt No Comfort, It's not happy but it is badass, Mentions of Blood, Mentions of Death, Nicole-centric, Post-Season/Series 03, death is the main topic kinda, kind of, unkillable gay</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-03-01</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-03-01</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-01 14:35:14</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,613</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/22971139</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/AlexRyzhy/pseuds/AlexRyzhy</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>"Sit back down! Sit back or I'll kill you!"</p><p>Nicole's voice is unnervingly even when she replies, looking him straight in the eye, head just a little bit cocked to the side as if in genuine wonder:</p><p>"Is that supposed to scare me?"<br/>---<br/>Or: killing people affects you, but so does being the one killed.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Waverly Earp/Nicole Haught, Wynonna Earp &amp; Nicole Haught</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>6</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>130</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>took one to the chest (without even a sound)</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>It was only a matter of time before I wrote a WE fic. But of course, it couldn't be something fluffy, no.</p><p>Note: I did not think through or write in any motivation for the episodic enemy here because I didn't feel it wasn't important for the fic's purposes.</p><p>Apologies for weird formatting, it just felt right here. Hope you enjoy.</p><p>Work title is from Shinedown - Diamond Eyes.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>"Why is it that every time I'm with you I find myself in this kind of crap?"<br/>
"Hey, it was your fault the last time!"</p><p>Wynonna mocks offense, but the reality of their situation is not funny and Nicole is honestly way too done to find her friend's defense mechanisms even a little bit charming. They are standing on their knees in the mud and an unstable psycho is pointing a gun at each of their heads in turns, his hands shaking so madly it's a miracle he hadn't pulled the trigger by accident already. He gets on Nicole's nerves, but not just for obvious reasons listed above. The guy is an ordinary human. He is not at all involved in the whole supernatural circus they have going on, oh, no, he's just a random human with his roof off its hinges. It's exactly the type of a threat Nicole is supposed to deal with as a part of her day job. It's what she does.</p><p>Yet at the moment she's so far gone she just can't bring herself to care (and every inch of her being hates herself for that). Her girlfriend is gone, the town she's supposed to be a sheriff of is collecting dust, her girlfriend is gone, she was drugged and kidnapped, her girlfriend is gone, gone, gone in the damn Garden, and she's here, stuck with this completely irrelevant nutjob, wasting her time and wanting to break something so badly--</p><p>He makes a shot up in the air to intimidate them. Wynonna jumps and curses under her breath, wishing oh so badly that her sword was back to being a much more useful gun at the moment, but Nicole stays still. To her own surprise, she feels empty. Unbothered.</p><p>Slowly, calmly, she unbuckles her utility belt and lets it slide down her hips to the ground.</p><p>"Earp."<br/>
"Nicole, what the hell are you doing..."</p><p>Without another word, she slowly starts rising up. The guy points a gun at her immediately, his pupils blown, his voice shrieking:</p><p>"Sit back down! Sit back or I'll kill you!"</p><p>In return, her voice is unnervingly even when she replies, looking him straight in the eye, head just a little bit cocked to the side as if in genuine wonder:</p><p>"Is that supposed to scare me?"</p><p>She can hear Wynonna sharply holding her breath back behind her. She can also see something stutter in their captor's eyes when her reaction does not fit a template. He struggles to gather his thoughts and it allows her to continue standing up straighter. Her face is still mostly emotionless as she continues, words a little raspy, barely above a whisper:</p><p>"You don't even know...how many times I've made my peace with dying already."</p><p>
It's cold. She can't see where she is, and she isn't sure if it's because her head is still wrapped in something or because her eyes are caked shut with blood. She can't even move her hands to check. Her body doesn't respond, it doesn't move when she wills it to. Because of the drugs, because of the blood loss, because of the pain. Her head hurts, her ribcage hurts, it's hard to breathe. It's so cold. She can't feel her legs anymore. She fleetingly hopes it isn't frostbite. She'd prefer to keep her legs. It's so incredibly hard to think. The world is pitch black yet it still manages to spin violently. One second she wants to vomit - and the next the urge is gone because there is no strength left in her body for that. Her chest hurts so badly. Are her ribs broken? Are they in her lungs? Who knows. She can't move. She gets numb. Hot blood on her face went sticky and cold. Guess there is no more left in that head wound. Or maybe she just doesn't feel it anymore. So cold. So numb. It's like falling asleep. The pain is almost gone now, muffled by thick cotton. She's slipping. Slipping away. She'd be sad about dying if the drugs in her system would let her think. If she wasn't too tired and weak to think at all. The last thing she remembers before she's gone is Waverly Earp, that beautiful girl, smiling at her from the front porch of the Homestead. This memory makes her warm. She clings to it.
</p><p>
Then she's gone.
</p><p>
She stares down the barrel of a gun. Willa Earp is pointing a gun at her, and even if Nicole knows that there's a bulletproof vest under her uniform shirt, she doesn't dare to hope that this woman will shoot her in the chest and not opt for the face to scar her younger sister in the most horrible way possible. Her head, sadly, isn't bulletproof. And the problem is, Nicole really can't be sure that she won't be shot today. She may be only very recently let in on the whole story, but she's smart. She can figure out that whatever it is that is placed on the scale against her life right now - it isn't something easy for Wynonna to give up. It's clearly something worth a life. Maybe multiple lives. And boy, there's a lot of that on Wynonna's shoulders. Nicole really won't be able to blame her if the heir just lets her get shot right now, even though she'd really rather not. But she did say that she was in, didn't she? All in. Turns out this is what it takes. She hopes that Waverly won't have to see her die tonight, she hopes that Wynonna will choose her over, what is it, a gun? - but she sees it in their eyes that the stakes are real, and honestly - who is she to judge? At least she got to hear that Waverly Earp loves her before she dies.
</p><p>
She only gets a brief moment of relief to breathe properly - and then all her breath is knocked out of her lungs and the gunshot rings in her ears as her back hits the wall.
</p><p>
Venom runs through her system, rips through her veins and blood vessels, destroys everything it touches. It's hard to breathe, it's hard to think, it burns, it burns, it burns so badly, it takes her body from her, denies her control. She can feel her organs struggling in its fire, her breathing fails her, then comes back again, the pain blurs her vision, blocks her thoughts, she's slipping away again, but this time she's almost grateful, because she can't, she can't, she can't— And then they bring her back to consciousness and it burns even worse, she can hear herself trashing and whining and screaming, her lungs feel like they are going to rip apart with each shuddering breath she takes. She forces herself back into her dying body, in the very eye of the fire, she gets a grip on reality and grits her teeth to keep her body from jerking around, to keep her mouth forming words instead of yelps. She knows she's going to die, she feels it in her bones, literally so. She keeps herself in the heart of the agony long enough to ask Wynonna to end her life as soon as she's gone, because she knows that she's a goner, long enough to tell Waverly everything she absolutely has to say before she dies, because she is, in fact, dying. She tries to smile and nod to promises of cure and salvation, but she feels like being skinned alive from the inside and at this point it seems that the only way to stop it all is to just stop existing altogether. At least she can do that easier now, knowing that she said sorry. That she told her how much she loved her.
</p><p>
The drug-induced coma swallows her like a thick black velvet blanket filled with hot endless pain and leaves her body to silently shut down organ by organ.
</p><p>
"Dying may be our only chance of living. Who's in?" Waverly is looking at her and her eyes are filled with fear, but also determination. She believes in what she's saying, and that alone is enough for Nicole to trust her completely. She'd follow her anywhere, no questions asked. But sheriff Haught is not a blind fool; the "may" in "may be" is not lost on her. The barn they are in is filled with explosives, and Waverly is holding the detonator. It isn't exactly rocket science - if Waverly is wrong, there won't be any pieces left of them to collect. Memories of their real life are fuzzy, it's hard for Nicole to keep the elusive Wynonna in her memory as it's aggressively trying to erase the heir away again, but she remembers her in spite, her warmth and her protectiveness, remembers that she cares about her immensely. She also remembers that Waverly was always there. That she loves her. That Waverly, by the looks of it, loves her back just as much. And that in this foreign reality Nicole is spending her evenings slaving at the station and watching Waverly trying to get married to a man three times in a row with eyes of a heartbroken puppy. And if there's a chance to get Wynonna back, to get that foggy world back, then it's worth risking dying for. And if at the very end she got to feel the love she craved desperately for so long, then she's okay with that. And if Waverly is kissing her right now, then it's not the worst way to go.
</p><p>
The button clicks, the explosion deafens her ears and the heat hits her face as fire swallows everything around them.
</p><p>
 The drop happens so quickly she barely has a chance to scream. The stone crashes against her knees, but she's still hanging thanks to Wynonna clinging to the rope with everything she has left in her - and despite her being, well, Wynonna, what's left in her is not a lot. Nicole can hear fighting up above, but she can't see it. The only thing she can see is Wynonna, bloodied and still partly delirious from the car crash, with an injured arm, struggling to hold Nicole's weight and slowly inching closer and closer to the edge of the cliff. Nicole doesn't need her nine years of climbing experience to know that as soon as Wynonna falters - they are both going down. She tries to reach a rock, to stabilize herself, but her grip slips again and again. She looks down and sees what's probably a certain death for both of them. It was a miracle that Wynonna survived when the car crash threw her over the edge earlier this morning, there's no way she's getting this lucky twice in one day, let alone both of them. Nicole doesn't want Wynonna to die. She also doesn't want Waverly to lose Wynonna. True, she also really doesn't want Waverly to lose herself, but let's be realistic here, Waverly can find herself another lover. Probably. But she's already lost most of her family and she for sure can't find herself a new Wynonna. Definitely. Both her training and her experience are yelling at Nicole to just drop down instead of dragging Wynonna with her, one life instead of two. But she doesn't have a knife on her, and Wynonna is too stubborn, clutching the damn rope and refusing to let go even as she's basically crying from pain and her arm gives out. Nicole is losing her voice from screaming at the oldest Earp to let her fall. It's the smart thing to do. It's the only smart thing to do. She's okay with that. She looks down again, feels the rope trembling, closes her eyes and prays that when she meets those sharp rocks at the bottom - she meets them alone. For everyone's sake.
</p><p>
Wynonna's grip on the rope slips.
</p><p>
She's dragging her weary feet down the road and curses under her breath. On the second thought, maybe walking all the way from the Gardener's house to the Earp Homestead with an open wound in her gut wasn't the best idea. Probably better than staying at the house with a vampire while leaking blood everywhere, but still. No matter how hard she presses her hand against the gash, the blood doesn't stop. It soaks her shirt and pours down her leg, and her strength is pouring out with it. With every step, her feet are getting heavier. Her vision blurs, swims, then starts blinking in and out. Her head spins, her thoughts tangle. She pushes through, she keeps walking, mumbling lame encouragements to herself, just like that one time she was struggling to finish a rough running course at the Academy, but worse. Her legs seem to be made of tissue paper now, or so it feels. Nicole misses the moment when the world flips around her and the ground mercilessly slams against her body. She barely has left enough in her to groan. The sky above her would be pretty if it would stay still and if she wasn't tasting bile in her throat from looking at it. The corners of her vision are tinted black now. Maybe she can just rest. A bit. A second. Then she'll get up again. That's a big fat lie and she knows that, but has no desire to admit it. The moment she sees a man who steps into her quickly fading sight, she knows she's done for. She's a piece of meat leaking blood all over the place, and the last time she saw him he killed a man in front of her, mad with hunger. Yet with her consciousness turning off faster than a plugged off TV, she can't bring herself to care. 
</p><p>
Then it all turns black.
</p><p>"I-I said... I'll kill you! I'll really kill you, you hear me?!"</p><p>Nicole is standing tall, her hands just hanging by her sides, and she doesn't blink when she all but spits one single word at him:</p><p>"Try."</p><p>The gunshot makes her shudder a little still, but the hit never comes. Like in slow motion she watches the guy drop to the ground with a fountain of spluttering blood, losing a grip on his weapon. And then - it's all done and Wynonna is standing by her side, panting, clutching a gun she fished out of Nicole's holster while their captor's attention was glued to the redhead.</p><p>"Hardcore, Haught." She manages a comment, but Nicole shrugs it off, taking her gun and belt back.<br/>
"I guess you rub off on me."</p><p>But Wynonna looks at her with serious, somber eyes, and they both know that "rubbing off" had nothing to do with what just went down.</p><p>Nicole puts her gun back at her side and closes her eyes for a second.</p><p>
She gets resuscitated on sight. The bullet gets stuck in her vest. The venom gets cured. The realities realign themselves and they survive the explosion. Waverly helps Wynonna with the rope and she gets pulled up. Doc carries her to safety and she is healed by the literal angel.
</p><p>
And the little six year old girl is pulled from a boat by a local policeman never to be found by those who slaughtered her aunt and uncle, and a whole festival of people with them. But she never really forgets the screams. The blood. The signs carved into human flesh. Never really forgets finding first-hand what dying was. Never really forgets curling in that boat and thinking in frozen horror that she is going to die, too.
</p><p>She never does die in the end.</p><p>But the feeling follows her.</p><p>It always does.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Thanks for reading! Comments are appreciated.</p><p>You can come yell at me on tumblr at @alexryzhy or on twitter at @alexryzhy_ if you want to, I like people yelling at me for these things.</p><p>Earp Now.</p></blockquote></div></div>
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